Convivium, a vocal ensemble founded by Eric Tuan in 2012, “explores the ways in which choral music can be a force for transcendence, creativity, and social justice in the 21st century.”
Turning the slogan into the reality of performance, Convivium is presenting a free concert at 4 p.m. on March 4, in Los Altos’s Christ Episcopal Church. The title is “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” and Tuan says “It will bring to light the common themes in scripture and musical tradition in Buddhism and Christianity.” Admission is free, and “those of any faith or none are welcome.”
Besides the performance by the choral ensemble, the event will also feature the Rev. Claire Dietrich Ranna, an Episcopal priest who incorporates zazen into her own prayer practice. She will lead an introduction to mindfulness meditation.
The concert follows Convivium’s 2016–17 season, which featured performances serving as fundraising events for LGBTQ nonprofit Trans Lifeline, the National Immigration Law Center, and Episcopal Migration Ministries, a refugee resettlement program.
“As a Bay Area native who is proud of the rich religious diversity of our community, it’s been a special joy to program this concert,” says Tuan. “The words of the Sermon on the Mount rub shoulders with the Sanskrit breath mantra and the poetry of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk and peace activist Thích Nhất Hạnh.”
The program includes Reed Criddle’s Chant of the Sixth Patriarch, which describes one of the foundational stories of what would later become Zen Buddhism; Arvo Pärt’s setting of the Beatitudes, Reed Criddle’s arrangement of a traditional Chan Buddhist melody, and Carly Simon’s “Let the River Run.”
Other composers of meditative works on the program: Ingrid Stölzel (Into Being), William Albright (Gloria and Sanctus of Chichester Mass), Rentaro Taki (Kojo no Tsuki), Paula Foley Tillen (A Prayer for Peace), and John Cage (Ear for Ear).
